This one is not about food

In Africa for the first time. I must have done something seriously right to receive such a generous friendship from Jai and Madison. I wake up in their Tangier home to the sound of crashing waves and a view of Spain across the Mediterranean.

It is time for my first meal of the day and Rabia has picked ripe blackberries from their garden. I struggle to recall a restaurant brunch that tasted better than this… I walk through their garden and share in the joy of the sunflowers dancing beside the sleeping moonflowers.  And as the resident bees guide me down a path that leads to the ocean, for the first time in a long time, I stop and smell the roses.

This has been a morning of for-the-first-time-in-a-long-times. For the first time in a long time…

• I have slept under a canopy that made me feel like a princess from the Arabian Nights.
• The sound of seagulls and bees is louder than any passing motor car.
• I have understood what it means to be fresh as a daisy.
• I wonder if every man is an island after all?

But, maybe an island that is waiting? An island is certainly perfectly happy without any visitors; and just as splendid without songs dedicated to its beauty. Just like my fellow singles on the website I signed up to a few weeks ago. I have a sneaky suspicion though that each one of us islands is also waiting for someone to discover us. We all want a witness to our lives. A partner in crime who will not let our life go by unnoticed. It isn’t a huge ask, but an important one.

-p